It’s 9:28 Post Meridian Eastern Standard Time. I’m dictating this from my hospital bed. The mattress is so uncomfortable. The springs are digging into my back. The buttons on the remote control that raise and lower the bed don’t work. They did once but that was a long time ago. So long ago I can’t even remember the year. There is a frame that attaches to the head board with a metal bar that hangs down over the bed. It’s called a trapeze obviously due to it it’s similar cousin used by gymnasts and circus acrobats whom perform feats of strength, agility, bravery & beauty suspended above gyms, arenas, fair grounds and circuses. It lays on the floor between the hospital bed and small table so the various people who come in and out don’t trip over it when they come to take blood, remind me it’s time to take my pills or any of the other things. The frame and trapeze are lying on the floor because the screws that are supposed to hold it regularly come loose and the whole contraption collapses on top of me. It fell sometime around thanksgiving last year and I’m still waiting for someone to for someone to come fix it. Whenever they send someone to “fix” it I know that inevitably it will come down again ... all 90 lbs. of metal chain, trapeze and welded steel frame crashing upon me laying trapped in the bed below. I think this is now the 5th time it has happened. Hurts like a son of a bitch. It always scares the shit out of Sparkle, a little rescue cat that is usually snoozing loudly next to me sharing the pillow. Sparkle has better hearing than me and seems to always manage to jump clear.

Every day at 5 PM the caregiver dejour raises and locks the metal side bars on the hospital bed where I lay confined for 16 or 17 \240hours until someone returns the next morning. There are standing orders that the protective rails on each side of the bed are fully raised so I cannot fall out and accidentally injure myself.

They also very effectively prevent me from intentionally getting out of the bed if I so desire in the same way a crib traps an infant safely inside. Even without the metal \240bars raised on the side of the bed \240my spinal injury would keep me from escaping the target zone quickly enough.

Aside from the excitement of additional injury due to falling sharp and heavy metal there is nothing to do except sleep, pet my cat Sparkle and try to engage her in admitadly one sided debates about philosophy, politics, the economy and increasingly long mental list I have been keeping about the downsides of our what our politicians refer to as medical care.

10:45 PM Time to try and fall back asleep.